[patriotic music] - Let's start our conversations with Maurice "Mo" Green, the Democratic candidate for state superintendent.

Sir, thanks for being on this special "State Lines."

- Oh, great.

Thank you for having me.

- Well, we've always started out, people see the names and they see the ads, but behind those ads, it's a person; who's Mo Green, and it would be Maurice Green on the ballot, but who's Mo Green?

What do you bring to the table should you become superintendent?

- Great, thank you.

And on the ballot, I should say Maurice "Mo" Green.

What I bring to the table, so I'll talk about, maybe a little bit about professional, and then maybe a little bit about personal.

So professionally, what I bring to the table would be I was a superintendent of Guilford County Schools for seven and a half years.

And so Guilford County is the third largest district in the state; when I was superintendent, served over 70,000 or so students.

Yeah, and we were able to do some good things, including improving student achievement, raising graduation rates, and also being recognized as a National District of Character.

Now, before that, I served as the attorney, general counsel, if you will, for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.

And that led into me then becoming the chief operating officer and then deputy superintendent for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Those jobs in CMS were also about seven and a half years.

And then most recently, I served as the executive director for the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, and that's a foundation that's based in North Carolina.

Only funds in North Carolina.

Funds any number of things, including supporting public education.

I also have been blessed to have many, many opportunities to work on various boards and initiatives, focused on a myriad of things related to public education, including homeless students, the arts, high school athletics.

I was the president of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association for a term, media, community support, policy.

So that's a little bit about me on a professional level, if you will.

Personally, been married to my wife Stephanie for 32 years.

We were blessed to have two children, and both of them attended and graduated from North Carolina Public Schools.

- What is the personal and professional scale like to go from an attorney of a large school system to superintendent of just a slightly smaller school system, to chairman of a huge organization that helps public education.

How have you changed through that process?

What has it taught you about public ed?

- Well, first of all, what it taught me is that there are a lot of great things going on in our public schools.

And oftentimes those things are missed, because there are absolutely things that we need to work on and improve in our public school system.

And so being, if you will, on the inside and seeing the great work that folks are doing day to day on behalf of our students, that was the first thing.

Because oftentimes the headlines might suggest otherwise.

The second thing that it clearly showed to me is the reforms: some require additional resources.

And the more that I've been involved in school systems, or related or around the school systems, the more I've become to fully appreciate how North Carolina is continuing to spiral downward with regards to things like funding of our public schools, which is then impacting the ability for the school system to do as well as it used to.

I'll just throw out a couple of statistics to sort of back that up, if you will.

So you're talking about North Carolina now being 48th in the entire country with regards to public school funding.

If you compare us to our border states of Virginia and South Carolina, we're 3 to $4,000 less than those states.

We're about 5,000 less than those states.

Oh, excuse me, than the national average.

- Is that per student?

- Per student.

And so you might think that that doesn't sound like a whole lot.

But when you times it in North Carolina times over 1.3 million students, you begin to recognize that that's real money that could do some incredibly important things for our students.

- How does that counter with Republicans who've written budgets, who say, "We have increased funding for education every single year."

And they would be, I guess, statistically correct about that.

But you come in as a candidate, to go: "Yeah, we're still 48th."

Is the cost of education, as a public service, rising that fast?

Or is North Carolina just watching the trends and staying just below the trend lines to keep us at 48, 49, 50?

- Yeah, so I think it's a combination of any number of things that one could perhaps look at, including the fact that the same report actually said, well, what is the effort that North Carolina can put into public education compared to the rest of the nation?

And the report, a few years ago, said that North Carolina was actually at the absolute bottom: not a state below it.

Yeah, if you're a poor state, then perhaps you would say, "Well, we can't afford it."

So that's why we then would be 48th in public education funding.

Turns out, North Carolina can afford to do more; we're choosing not to do more.

So I think that is one of the issues.

And then certainly, absolutely, there are increases in things.

We know what's happened with regards to inflation.

At the same time, we're not paying our educators to keep up with even the rising inflation prices, you know?

So this is a combination of things that has caused North Carolina's public school systems, the school system, to be, you know, near the bottom, and need to really do a dramatic turnaround to get us to a place where we can increase the resources, which will allow then more great things to happen in our public schools.

- What's your experience with the current General Assembly leadership?

A new House Speaker is coming in, and it looks like it'll be Representative Destin Hall, but Phil Berger has been in the Senate, oh boy, 13, 14 years as Senate Majority Leader, and you're a known person in the Triad area.

Tell me about that relationship.

Do you think you can, or how can you influence budget riders to hear your case?

- Sure, so I certainly have had a relationship with Phil Berger over the years.

You know, certainly try to appreciate where he's coming from, and then, you know, where his party is coming from on any number of issues.

Sometimes that does require us to challenge, you know, what's going on.

And so there certainly have been instances where, I'll just give one example, where we said perhaps the way that the General Assembly is going is not appropriate for our school system.

And that was with regards to something called career status for teachers, right?

So folks will know about tenure at the higher education level.

This is similar, you know, that educators can earn that status after working a certain number of years, right?

They wanted to essentially eliminate that and have educators go to sort of a contract basis, one to four years.

And I said, "Going forward, we absolutely can do that.

But those who have already earned it, I don't think you can just simply take it away," which is essentially what they were trying to do.

And so we did bring Guilford County Board of Education, Durham County Board of Education, and one individually named plaintiff that was me, brought a lawsuit saying that is not the appropriate way to go forward for those who had earned it.

Now, on other things, I think we've worked well together, when, as an example, trying to bring forward legislation on a couple of issues: one around volunteers, another around law enforcement.

And Charlotte-Mecklenburg found a great and positive response from the General Assembly.

So I look forward to those conversations.

I think we'll be able to engage in ways that I think will be beneficial.

And then the last thing I'll say on this point is this: The way that I operate is not to be by myself.

It's going to take the entire state to come along with me and say these are important issues for our children and for public schools.

And so different voices, I think, will have the ability to have positive impact on the General Assembly.

- In this political climate, there are gonna be a million people out there to cast ballots in favor of fundamental, I would dare say, reform, of the public education system, whereas you're coming from the other side as a superintendent; what do you say to those folks who are frustrated with public schools, to a point that they say, "We'll vote for something completely different," a completely different set of policies to mix it up, to change it up, to blow it up, if you will, no pun intended.

What do you say to them?

How do you convince them that you are the right person to bring the best in our public schools out?

- Sure.

So I'll point to a number of things in that regard.

The first of which is this: I am actually a nontraditional, if you think about it, in the sense of public schools historically have hired only traditional folks who have educational backgrounds, and that led to a superintendent's license to be a superintendent.

The law changed a few years before I was able to become, I'm told, the very first nontraditional superintendent in the state of North Carolina.

So I come from a mindset of being on the outside and figuring out then what it is that one could do to really try to reform and improve the public school system.

So that's the first thing.

The second thing is the way that I approached the work then was exactly that: that there are things that need to be done in our public schools.

I don't shy away from that.

We had the most low-performing schools in the entire state under the old accountability model when I started.

But we decided that we would come up with this huge vision that basically said we're gonna combine academic excellence with character development, and then an overall expression of excellence, being the best.

And what that did was it allowed us to do a number of different things that many folks now look back and say, "Well, those were incredible reforms that really made positive improvements on our educational system," to the point that under that old accountability model, those low-performing schools were not low performing.

We also then increased graduation rates from the high 70s to almost 90%: it's now over 90%.

At the same time, we increased the number of students who were taking and passing college-level courses or advanced placement exams or international baccalaureate exams pretty dramatically, increased the number of kids who were doing career and technical education courses, and was a National District of Character.

So when I hear folks talk about concerns, I say, "Allow us, the folks who have worked the work, to have enough resources to do what we know can be done, and then watch us get the work done."

And then the final thing I will say is this: The work that must be done is not simply work of those who are, you know, employed in the school system.

It takes everybody, from parents, community members, along with students to make the changes happen.

- Mr. Green, thank you so much for being on this very special "State Lines" for this special interview.

It'll be Maurice "Mo" Green on the ballot, Democratic candidate for state superintendent.

Thank you, sir.

- Thank you.

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